Robin Page Obituary

Robin Page who sadly passed away aged 80 at the end of May 2023 was not only a famous countryman and conservationist, as well as being well known for being a presenter of 'One Man & His Dog', he was also a vocal and active campaigner against membership of the EU.

He first came to my attention during the one and only Referendum Party conference in Brighton in October 1996. I was in the audience and it was getting late in the morning, there had been a number of earnest speakers but as it was warm and a bit dull I got to the stage where I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open - suddenly Robin Page was announced as the next speaker and from his opening remarks the conference hall came alive. He stood at the podium, looked at the audience of around a thousand or so present, and in a booming voiced announced we were "all failures!" It was quite a moment, he then repeated this sweeping statement and included himself in the fact that he was a failure too. He then explained the reason we had all failed was due to the vast sums of taxpayers money the EU was pending on propaganda trying to make itself look good and we had all failed to be brainwashed. Everyone laughed and from that moment he had us all in awe.

I was fortunate to have met Robin on several occasions and as a UKIP conference organiser I had the privilege of getting in touch with him to ask him to be one of ur conference and events speakers. He was always very easy to get on with and friendly when I was in his company. He was also a big friend of Nigel Farage who he invited to his wedding when he married later in life. Sadly, due to getting his application to be a UKIP MEP candidate in late, missing the deadline, he fell out with the party and quit, which was a loss.

He was elected onto his local South Cambridge District Council and as the Council web-site reported, he representing the Barton ward from 1973 until 2006 and then the Haslingfield ward from 2012 to 2016, as an Independent Member.

Robin always had a knack of adding great humour to the very serious issues he spoke about, which meant to points he made were always remembered who either read his articles or heard him speak. Unfortunately, the press in attendance at the Referendum Party 1997 rally in Crystal Palace, took his joke about how you castrate a bull and doing the same by applying electrodes to Edward Heath's testicles to stop him from breeding, was reported the following day as the Referendum Party 'baying for blood'. Although they must had got the joke they went all po-faced when reporting what Robin had to say.

Like a great number of people I have fond memories of Robin who was not only a great countryman, liked by many including King Charles, I feel honoured to have met and known him and sad to know he is no longer with us. I later gave the video recording I had of Robin's Brighton speech to the Museum of Brexit, hopefully they will make it available to those who want it.